How to play the Göring Gambit

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Content

The Göring Gambit is one of the most exciting options for White in the Open Games with 1.e4 e5. It is virtually unavoidable since White can employ the move order 2.d4 exd4 3.Nf3 Nc6 4.c3. This makes it possible for White to adopt the opening as the main weapon against 1.e4 e5. The opening leads to strong attacks for White, who generally gives up a pawn or two for a strong initiative. Players of the Black side need to prepare carefully for this dangerous opening.

This monograph represents a significant step forward in research on complex opening variations. Using new software tools, National Master Eric Schiller has not only discovered neglected resources, but has also found transpositional refutations to several important lines which have been misevaluated in the literature.

In addition, a great deal of original analysis is presented, showing that while White cannot count on any significant*opening advantage, the Goring Gambit is still a strong practical weapon where with best play Back achieves no more than equality. The lively attacking positions insure that White will have a lot of pressure, even against best play, and a slight error by Black can prove fatal.

The Goring Gambit is fun and easy to learn. Armed with the weapons in this book, the fearless attacker will be able to look forward to excellent winning chances.

The Göring Gambit

The Göring Gambit is one of the most exciting chess openings. White invests a pawn or two for rapid development and excellent attacking chances. It has played a significant role in the repertoire of such stars as Velimirovic and Ljubojevic and many of the great masters of the past. In the 1990s it remains a vital force in amateur and correspondence chess, though in professional tournaments it is less common.

It is one of the great strengths and weaknesses of the Göring Gambit that it has been studied in great detail for many decades. Theoreticians have disagreed over many critical variations, and to master all of the complexities of the opening would require a great deal of time. Professional players do not usually wish to spend so much time and energy on an opening which leads to an equal position at best for White, assuming that Black is properly prepared, as professional should be.

While such strenuous analytical work on an opening that is not as promising as, say, the Spanish Game, has little appeal to the tournament competitor, it has found a large number of willing volunteers in the area of correspondence chess, where the amount of time available for analysis is greater. In this book you will see hundreds of ideas contributed by the postal

chess community.

The complexity of the opening might seem to be a disincentive to adding it to a tournament repertoire, but in fact it is possible to play the White side of the Göring Gambit without memorizing a lot of lines. Once you have learned which lines are the most promising ones for White, you need only study those.

Playing the Göring Gambit eliminates the need for White to learn all of the many different defenses that Black can apply, especially if White uses the move order 1.e4 e5 2.d4 exd4 (there is nothing better) 3.Nf3 Nc6 (again this is considered best) 4.c3. No need to worry about the Spanish, Russian, Italian, Hungarian or the tricky Latvian and Elephant Gambits!

How to use this book

This book has been designed to teach the important variations and principles behind the Göring Gambit in an easy-to-follow format.

You should begin by playing through each of the 38 illustrative games without paying much attention to the notes. Just observe the flow of the game, and try to pick up the typical strategies and tactics. Pay special attention to common endgame factors such as double isolated pawns for Black on the c-file. Note also the critical mistake often made by Black through advancing the h-pawn to h6. The difficult problem of defending the pawn at f7 is tackled in a variety of ways, but often you will see that Black stations a queen at f7 even though the bishop is locked in at c8. As you deepen your study of the Goring Gambit these patterns will be seen over and over again in the subvariations.

When you have completed the task of playing through the games superficially, you can turn to the more detailed analyses. If you are learning the opening for White, you should start with the first chapter. If you are preparing a defense by Black, you can select only those sections which you need to know, but you should also study the Göring Gambit Declined with 4...Nf6 as it can arise from the Ponziani Opening (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.c3 Nf6 4.d4 exd4).